Empowerment for people with disablities (rights-based programmes for PWDs)
Tingyu Wang
Leonard Cheshire Disability
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Objectives: This paper discuss on the impact of development of the rights-based approach for PWDs in communities. A series of projects for PWDs taken in the countries of East Asia & Pacific Region identified as pilots resolving the issues towards to the disability issues, in particular the issues of poverty, disabled persons faced serious unemployment, and most families with disability lived in the poverty level of life.
Methods: Some of the projects implemented in East Asia and Pacific Region focused on the community development of empowerment for people with disabilities, training for partners of disabled person’s support agencies and people with disabilities; strengthening their capacity building, empowering the accessibility of PWDs for their community services, education, employment, working together with PWDs to advocate and Campaign on the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.Through the programme development, a large part the problem is identified that there is a gulf between legal policy intentions and their effective practice and there is no integrated mechanise for effective services for PWDs though the legislation or policy supporting PWDs exists in the most of countries. With Leonard Cheshire Disability technical and financial support, programme implemented in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines demonstrated a holistic approach of rights based programming for people with disabilities that are effective resolving the issues.
Results: PWDs’ rights are increasingly recognized, vulnerability, social exclusion and discrimination are open for discussion, poverty has been reduced in the project areas, for instance, China Economic Empowerment project has provided more job opportunities for the job markets; in Philippines, the inclusive education project has helped 1300 disabled children to enjoy their meaningful education; the Disability Resource Centre in Banda Aceh of Indonesia is providing comprehensive services in communities for around 660 persons with disabilities. Programmes in countries of EAPR increased great accessible community services, increased a great awareness of gender inequalities, social exclusion that have brought poverty for the families with disabilities, trafficking disabled children, disabled child abused & abandoned, etc.
Conclusion: Challenging is big, possibilities are existed. With Leonard Cheshire Disability support, the project work in EAPR so far shows how a holistic approach and other mechanisms have empowered PWDs in the accessibility of community based services, inclusive education, professional information accessible and the training, some cases in the communities have been reported a reduction in poverty with positive changes.

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